Buggiest game you ever played?

[SaunaKalja]

Stalker before a million patches.

Another noteworthy game was Splinter Cell: Double Agent. The gameplay itself wasn't so buggy, but the menus, configurations etc. made me think not a single person ever tried it before release. Minor stuff like the answers to a "yes/no" question in the menus were "ok/continue". Other stuff like autosaves removing quicksaves and key bindings resetting to default between levels. That combined with the dumbed down game mechanics made me seriously want my money back.

 

[chuckey]

Starfox Adventures for the Gamecube. So buggy it was unplayable - at one point you have a dinosaur following you for an escort quest; half-way through the quest the dinosaur expanded, collapsed, expanded, flew off into space then stuck me swimming in a rock before crashing the game.

Thank god those little bastards are extinct now...

I don't think that game was broken. I had it and beat it twice. You probably had a bad disk or something. Now if your talking about being unplayable, that trial with the lightfeet where gotta push the dude in the pit, that was fucking impossible.... unless you cheated with either the pen trick or a turbo controller.

 

[SoranMBane]

Almost certainly Fallout: New Vegas. I still love the game to pieces but goddamn, is it laggy. Even I have to admit that it can get downright unplayable at times.

Yeah found that too, got a pretty decent rig but if a lot of things happen onscreen at once it starts to run like I was playing it on a pocket calculator

For me it's mostly certain areas that tend to cause lag on a consistent basis. Usually places with a lot of NPCs (the Strip, the main floors in the casinos, the Hidden Valley bunker, etc.), but the outdoor spaces in two of the DLC (Old World Blues and Lonesome Road) also like to turn the game into a PowerPoint presentation if I stay for too long. The thing that makes it so painful for me is that I know the game underneath all the technical issues is just amazing on nearly every level, but it's just such a struggle to get to it that the frustration often outweighs the enjoyment.

It's also worth noting that the two DLC I mentioned that tend to lag a great deal are also the two best DLC, so it's almost as if the lag is deliberately targeting the most enjoyable parts of my experience.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

3D Dot Game Heroes. Towards the end, that game couldn't run more than ten minutes at a time without crashing to a black screen of death. I couldn't finish the final dungeon.

 

[The Night Shade]

Skyrim at least with that one i suffer most of the bugs

 

[Rhymer]

Most of the famous ones have already been mentioned, so I'm having a hard time thinking of one.

The bf3 beta was freaking hilarious, loved the worm-men.

 

[Phototoxin]

NWN 2 - bugged to death. Was actually unplayable in some areas.

 

[freakymojo]

Magicka, by far it was insane.

 

[Yopaz]

Since my save on Batman Arkham City disappeared last night I really want to say that. That would be a lie though.
Sonic Adventure 2 was a great game, but I fell through the ground too many times. It's the buggiest one I can think of right now at least.

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

STALKER series but specifically Clear Sky. It's the only one of the series that I have never played to completion due to the bugs, infact I never even got more than 1/2 way through it before the CTD and BSoDs killed it for me. Sad thing is now that GSC is shutting their doors I may not even get to finish it without resorting to 3rd party patches to fix their DRM if they shut down their authentication servers (and I do own a physical copy of the game).

Anything from Bethesda comes a close second but nothing I ever got from them was as gamebreaking as the bugs in Clear Sky

 

[Behazard]

For me definitely: Fallout New Vegas.
Several corrupted saves, and many times I couldn't play for more then 5-10 minutes without a CTD.

 

[Drakmorg]

Fallout New Vegas at release.
"Goddammit it crashed on me again, better load up latest quicksave. What the crap, this save is from like 3 hours ago! And all my later saves are gone too. Well fuck it, guess I'm starting from here again."

And yet despite all the bugs I still played through it twice before December last year.

 

[Freaky Lou]

Fallout 3. It actually ran pretty smoothly apart from the odd bit of foolishness, and then it ate my fucking save. I've only just been able to trust another Bethesda game after that, and only because F:NV was going for a tenner...

New Vegas and Oblivion. Both Bethesda games.

New Vegas isn't a Bethesda game. Obsidian made it; Bethesda's just the publisher.

New Vegas would have to be my answer as well though, despite the fact it's also my favourite game ever. I actually have tried to replay it several times, because I love it so much and never finished everything (and still haven't tried any mods), but the LAG stops me every time. That game always ran at like 7 FPS for me.

 

[mrsuperunderpants]

Fable 3, game breaking bug within the first 30 minutes, nice going Lionhead

 

[Dark Prophet]

For a while it was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. CS but they patched it up pretty soon, but Fallout NV, shit
where ti I start, I bought it at launch after 1 hour wanted to brake the disc in half, gave it to a modding friend instead, bought it again recently from a bin to test it so I could figure out whether I want to buy the ultimate edition or not, as of right now I will not buy it. It is still buggy as hell, even more so then 3 and I can't understand how that can be.

 

[Freaky Lou]

Bethesda is a major company, the staffing probably goes into something like a thousand heads on projects they run, I refuse to believe that just because the companies have different names there isn't any overlap. Besides, publishers still have a responsibilty to make sure these things are functional. Being GOOD is down to the developers and designers, but being functional should be on the people who pay for the whole deal.

Obsidian isn't a subsidiary of Bethesda or affiliated in any way. Bethesda contacted them to make New Vegas, paid them a flat fee to do so, and that was the end of that. The reason Bethesda wanted them is Obsidian has a lot of guys from Interplay/Black Isle, who made the original Fallout games. Getting a bit off-topic, though.

OT: Another contender would be Pathologic for me, but I'm like 30 minutes in so we'll see how that goes. As many of the problems have to do with translation as crashing/bugging out.

 

[Danglybits]

Besides the NES games that only worked when they wanted to, I'd say Vampire: Masquerade.

 

[Noble_Lance]

No-one's going to mention Alpha Protocol? That was the first game I actually turned off and returned the same day I got it. Absolutley fucking awful, whoever gave the green-light for that to be released as it is needs shooting.

Boiling Point was buggy as hell but sill entertaining, never finished it though.

Vampire: Bloodlines is probably the second buggiest game I've ever played but it was just so damn good.

I've been quite lucky with Bethesda games, no real game-breaking bugs for me, just a few minor ones.

It was mentioned earlier

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Gothic 3 - Forsaken Gods...the entire game was a big f. bug (even after the million patches they released)...In the first 5 mins of gameplay I encountered 5-6 game breaking bugs...

To hell with this game! Gothic 1 and 2 are two of my fondest gamin' memories ever. I guess i had 9 playthroughs in Gothic 2, but i never played G3 more than an hour.

Every animal could stunlock you in your "got hit"-animation, which led to the situation, that 2 boars could eradicate the whole capital. And you got to know, that you could kill ANYONE in G3 even the questrelated guys iirc.

Armor just didn't work. Dunno, how such a bug could've "slipped" into the gold version of an rpg. Skills just didnt work or didnt work as they should. Some quests couldn't be finished or started. Sometimes NPC's were missing, sometimes people just hostiled you.
I wont even start on the graphic bugs, because they were as plenty as i've pixels on my screen.

Holy crap, even if you would multiply the bugs in BF3 with Skyrim you probably only would cover less than half the bugs of Gothic 3's release.

 

[Sjakie]

Cant remember that Bloodlines was as buggy as people say, it's been years and years since i played that game and all i remember was that some quests where bugged but thats all.

New Vegas on the other hand was a complete insult to all gamers that payed for it (and still is??) so that one wins hands down!